As old as time, sales & marketing are the skills we all share as humans and practice every day.
No matter your age, origin, background, profession or character, you close deals daily, if not hourly. We adopt marketing and sales in every word and action.
We tend to market ourselves, looks, image, character, resume, appearance, opinions and our point of views. In every situation within the range of waking up till sleeping we start and end the cycle tens of times in a glimpse without even noticing.
Before leaving the house, we make sure we look good and have arranged thoughts. We have a plan of where we will go and what we will be doing and whom we would meet. The first marketing tool we use by default is our smile and greetings, in an attempt to win the prospect attention, conversation, or time. We tell stories and we do our best finding attractive and convincing ways to tell the story.
People not doing that primitive action would simply fail marketing themselves. Surely we have faced such personalities at some point.
At work, you market yourself starting from the interview phase, having your best outfit on and getting into the confident look as much as you can. This process is ongoing and non-stop enhanced, seeking to reach a higher performance, outstanding reputation, and awaited promotion or recognition. What we eventually tag as “Gained Experience and Connections”.
You use your performance, skills, and appearance to push your SELF-marketing campaign. You promote your point of views, opinions, recommendations and plans, selling your ideas and results to your management and peers.
Even among colleagues, you sell your image as a cooperative, loving, honest and dedicated person. You are so keen to keep that image and have a surrounding environment where you are loved and respected.
On the other side, with family and friends, you offer understanding, compassion, time, care and love.
It’s a built-in instinct we are born with. We are all marketers and sales peoples in core. Yet, not all of us possess the same level of perfection doing it, and that’s when you say “I like/respect/love/cherish/appreciate/agree with that person” in case he/she were successfully able to close the deal and sell you their personality package.
In case you feel you dislike/disrespect/hate/disagree with someone, then that person obviously failed in closing the sales cycle and lost the deal with you. On the contrary, you were the one able to turn down his/her offer, as you did not buy his/her BS.
Watching a talk show or getting into an argument, each of the two or more parties participating is promoting his/her point of view, wit, sense of humor, ideas and appearance.
Even children, they use crying or nagging to get what they want, they use crying as a tool to announce their state of hunger, pain or fear. They successfully close the deal when their mom gets them their food, dad holds them or they receive a new toy.
You do not have to be a sophisticated intellectual person to notice those deals you close. Homeless people and beggars use that weak helpless look to market their situation and close the deal getting some change out of your pocket.
Marketing & Sales are a human nature more than a business science; it is in our brain.
End of the day, we close deals whether we buy other people’s thoughts and appearances, or we successfully sell our own to others.
Salespeople got a deadline, end of quarter or end of the year. Your deadline with life is the time for which you want to reach your target.
Think of a teenager convincing her dad to approve her going on a Euro-Trip in summer. Her deadline is summer, the prospect is her dad and the target is the trip.
She initiates a marketing campaign with her objective (Dad Approval), the strategy is compassion and empathy, the tactic is choosing the right time when her dad is calm and in good mood. Her tools are wit, sense of humor and dad’s love. Her challenge will be getting high grades by end of semester.
Every day is full of buyers and sellers of every type, some click and closes the deal and others don’t. It’s always about supply, demand, the right market and the right timing.
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